Manufacturers of engine components have been known to typically produce clamps that can be used for mounting one or more injectors onto an engine head. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,334,572 (hereinafter referred to as “the '572 patent”) discloses a system for securing a fuel injector in an internal combustion engine. The system includes a clamp for securing adjacent injectors to a cylinder head. The clamp includes a central portion with a hole for receiving a fastener to secure the clamp to the cylinder head, and a pair of symmetrical crescent-shaped clamping forks forming a U-shaped opening to facilitate lateral sliding engagement with diametrically opposed flatted portions of corresponding fuel injectors. Each arm includes an arcuate pad that engages a corresponding shoulder of the fuel injector to provide an axial clamping force to the fuel injector. The distance between the distal ends of one fork and the semicircular portion of the opposite fork can be selected to allow lateral sliding disengagement of the clamp from one of the adjacent injectors without rotation or removal of the other injector to facilitate servicing of individual injectors.
However, when multiple configurations of engine heads are produced, specifications pertaining to one configuration of engine head may differ from another configuration of engine head. For example, a cylinder spacing, used to define distance between adjacent cylinders, in one type of engine head may be different from a cylinder spacing in another type of engine head. Accordingly, a position of the fuel injectors may also vary to correspond with the cylinder spacing present on such multiple configurations of engine heads. In such cases, previously known systems such as, but not limited to, the system of '572 patent cannot be used to accomplish a mounting of the fuel injectors across different configurations of engine heads. As a result, manufacturers of previously known clamping systems may be required to produce unique clamps for mounting injectors on engine heads with different configurations, and may thus incur increased manufacturing costs.
Therefore, with multiple configurations of engine heads being produced by engine component manufacturers, there exists a need for a single system that can be used to accomplish mounting of the injectors on at least two different configurations of engine heads.